The Best TV Episodes of 2012

Mad Men—"The Other Woman"

Mad Men is about a lot of things, but it dwells on three subjects in particular: First of all, it's a long-form exploration of Sally Draper's future therapy sessions. (I'm serious. Think about it.) Second, it's a stark, unflattering portrait of the eternal lecherousness of men. For every seemingly glamorous (and flagrantly adulterous) hook-up, there's a pitiful, pathetic rejoinder: Don always ends up getting put in his place by his mistresses, Roger faces rejection by Joan as often as she humors him with hotel sex. And then Pete with the nanny, Lane making a pass at Joan, et cetera. Third, finally—and I'd argue that this is the piece that makes the show great—it's about the upward mobility of women.

Usually the show-runners are pretty subtle—they seduce you with the martinis and oysters, the bow-tied balls, the meticulous décor of Don's season 5 apartment. You're so enthralled that you barely taste the disgust as it goes down. But sometimes, just to make sure they're being clear, they just come out and say it. "The Other Woman" is the best—and least subtle—episode last year.

This kind of directness is something you have to earn. You earn it by methodically making your case season after season. When you're so subtle for five years, bluntness feels like catharsis. That Pete has the gall to ask Joan to whore herself out for the company; that the other partners, seemingly good men, agree; that Joan ultimately goes through with it: this is the natural extrapolation of the argument Mad Men has been making for years, the extent to which sexuality is linked to a woman's career, the extent to which the men are complicit in it. That great Jaguar tagline they come up with while all the other drama is going down—At last, something beautiful you can truly own—is the piece de resistence of a show with no shortage of metaphor. And like all great ad copy, it's only half the story. The other half is: at what cost?—M.B.

Boardwalk Empire—"Margate Sands"

The seeds for this were planted a year ago: For a show that's received mostly lukewarm critical reviews, Boardwalk Empire sure set off a divisive firestorm with its second-season climax, in which fan favorite and ascendant protagonist Jimmy Darmody was summarily ecuted, uttering what would become not only season 3's tagline but its central theme, "You can't be half a gangster." Well, Boardwalk sure went full gangster this season, with a tidal wave of bullets and blood begat by psychotic rival Gyp Rosetti, and a series of sudden deaths, from smooth-talking Irishman Owen Sleater to a young brat poised to become the next Jimmy, that made it truly feel like anyone was fair game. By the time we got to the balls-to-the-wall finale, every murderous possibility was still in play: Would Richard die a tragic death? Would Gyp get his, or survive to fight another season? In the end, those questions were answered as we the fans expected—nay, demanded—but the overarching lesson was clear: Boardwalk Empire has grown into the most unpredictable, ballsy show on television, and the bell now tolls for whomever it damn well pleases.—D.T.

Bob's Burgers—"God Rest Ye Merry Gentle-Mannequins"

We don't want to give away too much about this episode, so we'll just entice you with a few tidbiis:

Zach Galifinakis plays a supposed homeless man—actually, he lived in a storage unit—that's taken in by Bob and his family.

There's a "Cool Runnings" reference.

There is a sex shop-mannequin heist that involves vibrators and lube.

It's the most funny and sweetly endearing Christmas episode you'll watch this year.—K.S.

Girls - "Welcome to Bushwick"

In the first episode of Girls, Hannah Horvath (Lena Dunham) tells her financially numb parents that she wants to be "the voice of my generation," or, "a voice of my generation." Seven episodes later, she strung out that Millennial angst at the thematic center of her creation with something that every New York twenty-something can gravitate around: falling down the cartoon rabbit hole just past East Williamsburg will always end with a story to tell. And this is the episode that struck a blow to the Sex and the City chatter that succumbed Girls from the get-go: While the rich girl Carrie shopped for heels on Fifth Avenue, broke Hannah goes full neurotic inside a warehouse off Montrose Avenue. Jessa spits on two douchey hipsters' faces; Marnie trails her ex-boyfriend after breaking his heart; Shoshanna smokes crack; and, in the backseat of a cab, Hannah heads home smirking, squished in between her best friend and new boyfriend. Welcome to Bushwick? You're damn right.—J.S.

Justified—"Slaughterhouse"

Okay, so maybe I have a thing for big, bloody, loose-ends-tying season finales. But the season 3 finale of Justified showed off all that's right with the criminally underrated (because it's about a US Marshall, get it?) FX drama: the always-mystifying anti-anti-heroics of Walton Goggins's Boyd Crowder; lots of stylistic bloodshed; and the ongoing father-son conflicts of Arlo and Raylan Givens, demonstrating that the latter isn't always the square-jawed Wayne lookalike he presents to his enemies. And though carpetbagging gangster Robert Quarles wasn't quite a match for season 2's interfamily showdown with Raylan and Mags and the rest of the Bennett clan, to have his sociopathic antics ended by literal disarmament provided a guilty-pleasure bang to the slow burn of a well-crafted, well-acted, and often poignant crime drama.—D.T.

Homeland—"Q&A"

We're not arguing that the last half of this season, universally panned for its melodrama and STFU-incredulity, didn't leave something to be wanted. But bitch too much, and you might forget the flashes of genius that spark-plugged the second act. Carrie's maniacal smile in the Lebanese market. Her vindication when the (albeit ridiculously unearthed) suicide video is discovered. And this episode brought the same brain-chess magic that got us hooked in the first place.

Homeland is largely about the distance between the way we act and the way we feel, and no other scenes in the short history of the show bridge that gap more than the good-cop/bad-cop interrogations of "Q&A." Up until this point, we've seen flashbacks of broke-down Brody, and cracks here and there, but we've never seen him implode. Enter the magnetically cruel Agent Quinn, who pulls the POW apart, piece by piece, all over again. He's a guy who's used to delivering threats and used to getting answers. And then he snaps—in one of those perfect twists the writers mostly wisely dole out—and stabs Brody's hand. This is likely premeditation but possibly genuine rage, and we don't just get our first peek into Quinn's own dark-hearted psyche. Brody is pushed to a physical break. He cries. He's shocked. He's afraid. And, most importantly, he shows his cards. This honest reaction provokes Carrie as she takes her turn at the table.

The ensuing conversation, somehow psychological game and bare-all confessional at once, feels just as dangerous as any of the tick-tock devices. We've already seen the two of them physically undress each other, but there's something more compelling here. Like a game of mental strip poker, they inch closer and closer toward emotional nakedness. In the end, Carrie confesses her obsessive love and fantasies for a married man who's jeopardized her sanity, Brody his deep-rooted fear that he is a literal monster, a lonely one at that. For any viewer who's ever put aside the dice in a mind-fuck relationship, the realness of their nerves and emotions concretizes our suspicions that what the two of them have is real. It's a moment that also marked Homeland's lane-change onto Histrionic Boulevard, but, in my mind, the payoff of this episode was worth the sideshow car accident, the laughable pace-maker hacking, and all the maudlin impulses the most promising series on TV succumbed to.—A.R.

Louie—"Barney/Never"

The third season of Louis C.K.'s Emmy-winning series strayed somewhat from past setups. Instead of the usual two-part vignettes that almost never have anything to do with each other, and almost always make you uncomfortably cry of laughter, C.K. opted for longer, plot-driven episodes. "Barney/Never" was one of the few that remained, and it was the best episode this year. First, there are few things in this world more entertaining to watch than a grayed Robin Williams and a graying Louis C.K. talk shit about a recently deceased mutual "friend" who everyone, except the strippers he paid for, hated. Second, Louie playing babysitter for a kid who never hears the word "no" introduced to the lexicon the phrase "shit the tub." And third, the legendary Leon (human name: J.B. Smoove) from Curb Your Enthusiasm has a gravedigger cameo. You usually think of intricate, hour-long dramas when applying the Best Episode label, but this is a show that is by no means simply a comedy—we're looking at you, Parker Posey.—J.S.

Archer—"Crossing Over"

Like many animated comedies, Archer's brilliance isn't so much defined by storylines, so much as the sheer volume of memorable, LOL-worthy moments it manages to pack into a scant 23 minutes each week. So accordingly, the purpose of writing this isn't to single out "Crossing Over" as the strongest episode of the show's very strong third season, but rather to shame you for not having watched every episode already, you poor, deprived TV philistine. Anyhow, "Crossing Over" demonstrated the wisdom of putting the show's two best characters in close (oh-so perversely close) contact, with an epic drinking montage and the return of Cyborg Barry Dylan, to boot. Is that a recipe for an amazing episode, Other Barry? Why, yes, Other Barry, yes it is.—D.T.

New Girl—"Normal"

On New Girl, everyone constantly talks about how they used to be someone else: Winston (Lamorne Morris) used to be an inconsiderate, exceptional dick, before he lost his contract playing pro-basketball in Latvia, and came back chastened and hapless and wound up; Nick (Jake Johnson) used to be a law student, before he got his heart broken, before he started playing guitar in an alt-country ska band and gambling a lot, before he drove down to Mexico to try to enter a cock fight "as a person," and then came back Stripes-era Bill Murray; and Jess (Zooey Deschanel) used to be even more Jess-ish, before her boyfriend cheated on her and this show began. Schmidt, of course, used to be Fat Schmidt, given to giggles and germaphobia; then he lost 150 pounds of lard, possibly with semi-legal Bolivian diet pills, gained 20 pounds of muscle, memorized every page of Malcolm Gladwell and, gah, GQ, and honed himself into "a sexual snowflake" capable of describing his bedroom, convincingly, as "Darwin's jungle. Where open-minded people do weird things to each other." Schmidt (Max Greenfield) at first seemed like the show's Kramer—its clowning id—but he turns out to be another George Costanza, all excess need and insecurities and conniving schemes and coping mechanisms to keep them at bay. In one early episode, Schmidt strides out in his 'mono—you know, his mini-kimono—chanting, "Friday night! It's on! It's on and poppin'!" "What happened to you?" Nick responds, plaintively, head-shakingly, "You didn't used to be like this, Schmidt. You've gotten so much worse."

This is how all of us talked about ourselves in our twenties, even though we'd barely had time to become anyone, much less change from one person to another. This is the thing, the organizing insight, that made the show an actual show, instead of just some She & Them Zooey Deschanel vehicle, and it's the thing that sometimes even makes New Girl seem big and true and a little sad. Every great sitcom, which this could maybe become, has to have an organizing insight; Cheers was always about how you build and hold onto surrogate families, even if those surrogate families are composed of drunks and know-it-alls; Parks and Recreations, which is the only show on the air almost as good as Cheers, is devoted to, in the words of NPR's Linda Holmes, "its heart-swelling optimism about the capacity of human beings to do wonderful and kind things for each other." New Girl is a show about how we go from being dipshit, self-absorbed kids, which we're all so expert at, to becoming actual human beings, which is hard. It's a transition that tends to turn us all a little peculiar for a while, and the characters on the show keep getting odder, not cooler, more exposed and unmoored and prone to meltdown.

Probably the funniest episode this year was Normal, in season one, which introduced Jess's fancy new boyfriend Russell (played by either Dermot Mulroney or Dylan McDermott. Or Derbel McDillet) to the roommates' favorite game "True American." It is, according to Winston, "90% drinking and then it's got a loose Candy Land-like structure to it," but I can't try to explain the rules, except to say that the floor is molten lava and a lot of presidents' names get screamed out. And maybe it's more like Monopoly, in the sense that it never really ends, you eventually just can't stand it anymore. The rest of the episode they spend trying and failing to convince Russell that they're grown-ups too: starring at him for weirdly long periods, quizzing him on his sushi choices, pitching proposals from Nick's "idea notebook." This is the whole show, really, three boys and one girl in an apartment trying and failing and eventually, probably, some season, not too soon, because when it happens, all the hilarity and hysteria will deflate away like an old air mattress, becoming adults.—M.L.

Game of Thrones—"Blackwater" You've read enough praise about this one, so instead we talked to George R.R. Martin and show creators Dan Weiss and Martin Benioff about the making of the best, most spectacular hour of television this year. Read it here.

Mad Men is about a lot of things, but it dwells on three subjects in particular: First of all, it's a long-form exploration of Sally Draper's future therapy sessions. (I'm serious. Think about it.) Second, it's a stark, unflattering portrait of the eternal lecherousness of men. For every seemingly glamorous (and flagrantly adulterous) hook-up, there's a pitiful, pathetic rejoinder: Don always ends up getting put in his place by his mistresses, Roger faces rejection by Joan as often as she humors him with hotel sex. And then Pete with the nanny, Lane making a pass at Joan, et cetera. Third, finally—and I'd argue that this is the piece that makes the show great—it's about the upward mobility of women.

Usually the show-runners are pretty subtle—they seduce you with the martinis and oysters, the bow-tied balls, the meticulous décor of Don's season 5 apartment. You're so enthralled that you barely taste the disgust as it goes down. But sometimes, just to make sure they're being clear, they just come out and say it. "The Other Woman" is the best—and least subtle—episode last year.

This kind of directness is something you have to earn. You earn it by methodically making your case season after season. When you're so subtle for five years, bluntness feels like catharsis. That Pete has the gall to ask Joan to whore herself out for the company; that the other partners, seemingly good men, agree; that Joan ultimately goes through with it: this is the natural extrapolation of the argument Mad Men has been making for years, the extent to which sexuality is linked to a woman's career, the extent to which the men are complicit in it. That great Jaguar tagline they come up with while all the other drama is going down—At last, something beautiful you can truly own—is the piece de resistence of a show with no shortage of metaphor. And like all great ad copy, it's only half the story. The other half is: at what cost?—M.B.